The Pacific Northwest is known for five things: lumber, aircraft, tech, coffee, and crime. What might account for the abrupt rise and equally abrupt fall, between the nineteen-sixties and the turn of the century, of the “golden age” of serial killing? And why were so many of these brutes cradled in a crescent of psychopathy around Seattle’s Puget Sound? Fraser thinks the master key is to be found in the fact that the area south and southwest of Seattle was home to massive ore-processing facilities, and her subjects were reared in their murky shadows.

A sprawling data center in eastern Oregon has been linked to a huge rise in rare cancers, muscle conditions, and miscarriages.